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Today, in her ever-relatable and down-to-earth weekly newsletter for rich white girls, Goop, Academy Award-winning actress Gwyneth Paltrow sent out a guide to your "gut." Except this guide is not really about your gut. Almost the entire newsletter —except for the section about gluten-free pie crust — is about finding and grooming your inner aura.
Gwyneth has made some strange claims before, but for this weekly wonder, she brought in Jill Willard, who is an "intuitive." According to her website, Willard has been an intuitive her whole life. Goop explains that "Willard, who does not refer to herself as a psychic thanks to 'woo woo' and negative connotations, sees things."
Does all of this sound like a heaping pile of whacked-out insanity? Just you wait. Let's dissect some of the claims made by Willard in the Q&A section of the newsletter:
Listening to Your Gut
Claim: "We have all had the experience of not listening to our gut, and then learning a very hard lesson. As you exercise the muscle of your intuition these hard knocks become much more infrequent, and grace and peace replace high and low emotional experiences."
Is this true? Nope.
Intuition is proved by Quantum Physics
Claim: "Many believe that intuition is 'woo woo' and vague and fake. This is not the case. And now, science is proving this through quantum physics."
Is this true? No. Quantum physics has nothing at all to do with chakras and aura. Quantum physics is science. She might be referencing the idea that humans emit electromagnetic radiation that can be seen with infrared sensitive film. This, however, is not true. According to a paper by Victor J. Stenger from the University of Hawaii, "Any fanciful shapes seen in photographed auras emanating from humans can be attributed to optical and photographic effects, uncorrelated with any property of the body that one might identify as 'live' rather than 'dead,' and the tendency for people to see patterns where none exist."
Spend more time BEING
Claim: "We should spend half of our day simply existing-taking long meals with loved ones, walking, relaxing, and connecting. The BEING is where the self-love and deep gratitude lives."
Is this true? Of course! As long as you are a multimillionaire who is joyfully consciously uncoupled from the lead man of Coldplay and living in London and L.A. with a ton of money and plenty of help. If you don't have all of that, then you're probably screwed.
On Destiny
Is this true? The idea of free will versus destiny has been debated by philosophers for centuries. None of these philosophers have said anything about "20 percent of our whole being and life experience." None of them, I think, knew about co-creating our lives. I mean, Immanuel Kant, maybe, but... nah.
On death
Claim: "When a person passes, the self is left behind with the body on earth, and the person is of pure spirit. They are like a breeze."
Is this true? Breezes exist. Maybe spirits exist. Some people believe this. You do not have to if you do not want to.
On listening to your gut
Claim: "The gut is never wrong. It is very connected to oneness. It seems it is always for evolution, always there to aid us in moving onward or due north."
Is this true? My gut told me to eat a double cheeseburger with bacon for lunch today and that was definitely a mistake. Shut up, gut!
On change
Claim: "We can change a lot of things by sending good energy to one another. It greatly decreases the chance of catastrophe."
Is this true? Nothing is true anymore. Everything is a lie.